In 2021 more of our daily work is done online, from grocery shopping, availing services, banking, document sharing, etc. Most of the things are just a click away, we spend more and more hours on the internet, and that leads to more cyber-attacks. India ranked 3rd on the top 10 most cyber-attacked countries in the world. Companies like Facebook, Mobikwik, Dominos, Air India are recent examples.
According to research by the Cybercrime Magazine, the cost of cybercrime will reach 6 trillion dollars worldwide by 2021, and the price of ransomware damages will rise to 20 billion dollars.
To deal with and neutralize the ill effect of cyber-attacks, governments and business organizations take help from ethical hacking. Companies are focusing on upgrading their cybersecurity measures to protect their essential data, network, and information now more than ever. Cyber Security experts perform and pay more attention to ethical hacking and ensure safety from cyber threats and malicious activities on the internet.
They execute this by using ethical hacking tools to identify loopholes and deal with them accordingly. There are several types of ethical hacking tools available in the market to perform their work efficiently and help governments and business organizations to secure their data.
In this blog, we are going to explain some of the most trusted and efficient ethical hacking tools in 2021. But first of all, we are required to understand what Ethical Hacking is?
What is Ethical Hacking?
It is a practice of securing your data, networks, and information from getting stolen. Ethical hacking is also known as Penetration Testing. Cyber Security experts penetrate or probe into the networks or systems to identify threats and vulnerabilities in them that malevolent attackers may find to exploit crucial data and information. This will lead to loss of data as well as financial loss many times. Ethical hacking has focused on ensuring and improving the networks and systems by fixing and improving vulnerabilities discovered during testing.
Acunetix
Acunetix is a fully automated ethical hacking solution, and the application performs as an ethical hacker for the system. It gives you an upper hand on any malicious intruders in your system. The Acunetix tool can read and scan all single-page applications, HTML5, JavaScript, Authenticated web applications, WordPress themes, plugins, and core.
The Acunetix tool is fully scalable and can be available as an on-premises and cloud-based solution also. Acunetix is among the most used ethical hacking tools in the market because of its layered analysis of the network and sweeping for more profound threats. it can Scan all variations of SQL Injection, XSS, and 4500+ extra weaknesses and Identifies 1200+ WordPress topic, core, and module deficiency.
Features:
- Quick, Reliable and Scalable slithers a huge number of pages without interferences
- You can create security testing tools.
- It is useful for knowing about security compulsion.
- Helps in penetrating the testing.
- Helps in IDS signature development.
- Accessible On-Premises and as a Cloud solution
Netsparker
Netsparker is one of the easy-to-use hacking tools capable of automatically finding XSS, SQL Injection, and other vulnerabilities in any web service. It is available as an on-premises and SAAS solution.
Netsparker uses evidence-Based Scanning Technology to give users extreme perfection when it comes to discovering vulnerabilities. The scanner comes with a built-in REST API that integrates with the existing bug tracking systems and SDLC used by the organization, and it requires minimal configuration to operate.
Features:
- Proof-Based Scanning Technology helps in vulnerability detection.
- Netsparker does the automatic detection of custom 404 error pages, URL rules, etc.
- REST API for consistent combination with the bug tracking systems, SDLC, etc.
- Completely flexible solution. Scan almost 1,000 web applications in just 24 hours.
SafeVPN
The application enables users to check for their targets across the world as well as transfer files anonymously. It doesn’t store any data whatsoever and has 300,000+ IPs. It comes with a split tunneling feature and offers P2P protection. Ethical hacking tools like SaferVPN are admired while trying to test networks or software that are spread globally.
Features:
- No-Log VPN with high security
- Supports Windows, Mac, Android, Linux & iPhone
- The rapid speed with more than 2000+ workers across landmasses.
Metasploit
It is a Ruby written framework that is open-source pen-tested. It acts as a public resource for developing code and researching security vulnerabilities. It identifies security risks and documents which are vulnerable and need to be addressed first by permitting the network administrator to break into his own network.
It is also used as one of the practicing tools for beginner hackers to improve their skills. It also allows you to recreate websites for phishing and social engineering purposes. It supports Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux.
Features:
- Evade detection systems
- Run security vulnerability scans
- Execute remote attacks
- Enumerate networks and hosts
Nmap (Network Mapper)
Network Mapper is one of the most liked and used ethical hacking tools for information collection, and it is working on Kali Linux. It gathers insights about the host, OS detection, IP address, and other network security details. The main reason for Nmap’s popularity is that it is effortless to use and comes with a powerful in-built scanner.
Features:
- Spots unauthorized devices connected to the network
- Has 171 new scripts and 20 libraries
- Faster network security scanning
- Advanced TLS/SSL Scanning
Nikto
Nikto is an open-source tool for scanning the webserver. It can work on Windows, Mac, Linux, and UNIX systems. It does the scanning of the webserver for dangerous files, outdated versions, and particular version-related problems. It keeps the report in a text file, HTML, XML, NBE, and CSV file formats. Nikto can work on the system which supports basic Perl installation.
Features:
- It can check web servers for 6700+ potentially dangerous files.
- It scans the server for outdated server components.
- Using Headers, files, and favicons, it can identify the installed software.
- It has full HTTP proxy support.
John The Ripper
It is an open-source platform that is embedded with multi-platform functionalities and can be used by multiple operating systems as well. John the Ripper is developed by the Unix Operating system and one of the most used password crackers across the world. It is also one of the best securities to test password strength in your operating system.
John the Ripper can be utilized to test MY SQL (with the help of the third part) Hash LM (Lan Manager), Blowfish, DES, LDAP, MD4, MD5, Kerberos AFS.
Features:
- It performs dictionary attacks.
- It provides a customizable cracker.
- John the Ripper is mostly used for testing encrypted passwords.
- It provides several password crackers in one package.
Wireshark
Wireshark, previously known as Ethereal, and the founder wanted a tool for tracking network problems. Wireshark performs deep inspection of many protocols and is known as a packet analyzer.
It supports cross-platform and allows you to export the output to different file formats like XML, PostScript, CSV, and Plaintext. It provides the facility to apply coloring rules to packet lists so that analysis will be quicker and easier.
Features:-
- It can perform offline analysis and live capture.
- It can decrypt many protocols like ISAKMP, IPsec, and SSL/TLS, etc.
- It allows you to browse the captured network data using GUI or TTY-mode TShark utility.
- It can decompress the gzip files.
Burp Suite
Burp Suite was developed by Dafydd Stuttard and widely used to perform security testing on web applications. It is considered to be an advanced tool for ethical hacking and scanning for threats that testers can use. It has automatic scanning and automated crawl features as well.
Burp Suite hacking tools contain several powerful features which support both manual and automation testing for effectiveness and make it highly configurable to even the most experienced testers.
Features:-
- Effectively offer a wide assortment of specialized and consistent reports.
- HTTP message editor.
- Login Sequence Recorder permits the programmed filtering.
- Automate scan and filter.
- Survey weakness information with built-in vulnerability management.
- Content Discovery.
- Identifies critical vulnerabilities with 100% accuracy.
- Target Analyzer.
- Task Scheduler.
- CSRF PoC Generator.
Ettercap
Ettercap is an Ethical Hacking tool that supports cross-platform and is used for host analysis and network. Ettercap is fit for sniffing an SSH (Secure Shell) association in full-duplex and Permits sniffing of HTTP SSL, which makes sure about information in any event when the connection is made utilizing proxy.
Features:-
- Sniffing of live connections.
- Allows creation of custom plugins using Ettercap’s Application Programming Interface (API)
- Active and passive dissection of many protocols.
- Content filtering.
- Network and host analysis.